(1) Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to methods for operating manned aircraft and unmanned aerial vehicles. In particular, the invention provides computerized methods for preventing the unauthorized use of manned aircraft and unmanned aerial vehicles.
(2) Description of the Prior Art
On Sep. 11th, 2001 terrorists commandeered passenger aircraft and flew them into the twin towers of the World Trade Center. At present there are no automatic means to prevent manned aircraft from flying into restricted airspace such as areas around government buildings and high value terrorist targets such as the World Trade Center etc. The prior art has focused only on preventing aircraft from hitting terrain such as mountain ranges using GPS based geofencing type techniques. However, no prior art has been located that extends geofencing techniques to include real-time airspace restrictions such as those activated by the Department of Homeland Security's Yellow, Orange and Red based threat warning system. What is needed is a system and method that autonomously prevents unauthorized aircraft from entering restricted airspace based upon real-time and/or near real-time geolocation data corresponding to restricted airspace boundaries.
Moreover, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are predominately used in military applications. However, many civilian commercial applications are currently being identified and prolific use of unmanned aerial vehicles for civilian commercial applications is envisioned. While it is likely that the physical size of most civilian UAVs will be relatively small, within the range of radio control model airplanes, a security concern pertaining to unauthorized use of UAVs has come to the forefront, due to the threat of global terrorism. In particular, the concern is that an unauthorized person or group could weaponize a UAV by adding a warhead payload. The warhead could be chemical, biological or explosive, including explosive radiological.
The fear is that an unauthorized person or group would program a UAV's navigation system with navigation waypoints to target a civilian population or military asset. What is needed is a way to prevent unauthorized use of a UAV.